Simon Clark - The Fall

Sam and Zita backed out of the room, leaving the doctor gazing at the dying boy’s face, the parents still willing the boy to breathe, while the Reverend Thomas Hather stood behind them with his hands on their shoulders.

In a moment Sam and Zita were outside in the glaring brilliance of a summer’s afternoon.

Sam felt chewed up and spat out by the events of the past few moments.

He’d given it his best shot.

Not good enough, Sam, old buddy. Not nearly good enough .

He followed Zita to the car. It was covered in chalky smears from the drive into town. A few people were taking a close interest in it. A boy had climbed onto the bonnet to look in through the windscreen. An old man was poking one of the tyres with his walking stick.

Zita leaned against a wall, holding the briefcase to her chest. She looked exhausted.

Sam leaned against the wall next to her.

‘I screwed up,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I screwed up royal’

‘We did our best. But you’ve got to respect the parents’ wishes. Besides, I don’t think I could have given the boy the injection anyway.’ She shrugged, looking sick with herself. ‘I wouldn’t have had the guts.’

Across the town came the sound of a church clock striking two. Sam allowed his gaze to range across the street with its people hurrying to and fro. He noticed a good number of them were limping. There were people with legs that were so bowed they curved outwards until they looked as if they’d exchanged legs for springy bamboo canes. A girl of around 15 stared at him as she walked by, surprised at his and Zita’s bizarre clothes. The girl had a cruel squint, with one eye turned in to stare down the left hand side of her nose.

Squints, rickets, bow legs. The kind of medical problems that were ironed out of the human race after the Second World War by vitamin supplements and state-of-the-art medical care. Now he saw that perhaps one in five of all passers-by was suffering from some visible deformity or disability. This was the age when a glitch in your bone structure or a cast in your eye just couldn’t be fixed. So you stayed with the limp or squint all your life. He also noticed a couple of women with pink crinkled skin on their necks and faces; no doubt burn scars from nightdresses catching alight after brushing against lamps. Hadn’t he read somewhere once that in the 19 thCentury perhaps as many children were killed by their clothes catching fire as from disease?

Despite killer viruses, homicidal psychopaths, terrorists and speeding cars, 1999 suddenly seemed a very safe place to be.

‘Well,’ Sam said at last, ‘shall we be getting back to our little patch of tomorrow at the amphitheatre?’

‘Why not?’ she sighed. ‘I’m going to go down on my bended knees and beg a brandy from Carswell.’

‘Yeah, why not?’ He walked towards the car, feeling dirty and tired, and wishing for nothing more than to slide into a hot bath.

Yeah, in your dreams, Sam, old buddy.

He avoided looking up at the curtained window behind which the little boy lay dying. Shame and guilt were working hard together in his gut and he didn’t like the sensation. He didn’t like it one little bit.

He reached into his pocket for the remote to unlock the doors. As he did so he felt a hand touch his elbow.

He turned round to see a woman of about 25 looking earnestly at him through eyes that were so red and sore-looking that it seemed as if sand had been rubbed into them.

It only took him a moment to realise that she was the dying boy’s mother. She looked emotionally wrung out, her voice was a rasping whisper, but she was calm. ‘Sir… sir.’ She fixed those painfully sore eyes on him. ‘You won’t hurt him? You can give your word?’

He looked at Zita.

‘It’s just an injection,’ Zita said gently. ‘But we need to be as quick as we can.’

The boy’s mother nodded and hurried back to the house with both following.

Sam asked Zita in a low voice, ‘Are you okay?’

‘I’ve never injected a human being. I don’t know how much penicillin to use. I’ve never been so scared in my life before.’ She shot him a tiny smile. ‘But I’m going to do my level best.’

They went back into the house and up the stairs. Back across that darkened landing with dust motes hanging like silver stars in the air. Sam’s mouth was dry. The fate of the child was in Zita’s hands now. Maybe in God’s, too.

Blonde-haired Nicole Wagner, who had once aspired to a law career, sat by the stream to watch men and women eating crusts of dry bread.

She’d become a stranger in a strange land. The mouse ears twitched on the back of her shoulder, lightly tickling her skin.

It was a strange sensation but she knew she must get used to it.

There was no question of being able to cut out the mouse head, or for that matter the whole of the mouse body that had fused inside her upper torso. Even the cells were melded together, so for a few cubic inches inside her shoulder it wouldn’t be possible to tell where the mouse ended and Nicole Wagner began.

‘Here, you must be thirsty.’ William held out to her a mug that bore the picture of a bearded man along with the words: Edward VII. God Save the King! This was just one of a huge haul of pots, cups and plates that these people had scrounged and salvaged from any number of periods in history. She didn’t doubt for a second that here people sat side by side drinking from Roman goblets, Viking tankards, Victorian mugs and McDonald’s paper cups complete with plastic lid and straw.

She thanked him and drank. It was beer, not something she’d normally drink, but this tasted good: a rich, nutty flavour and not at all gassy.

‘Thanks,’ she said with a tired smile. ‘I needed that.’

‘Oh, but if all our problems could be solved by a yard or two of ale.’

‘I know mine could,’ came the gruff Cockney voice from William’s stomach. ‘Now, William, if you could see your way to putting away a cup or two of good London dry gin I’d be in boozer’s heaven, so help me.’

William shook his head. ‘The answer’s a regretful no.’

‘I bloody well knew it,’ Bullwitt groaned. ‘Tell me we’re moving on to some other place, go on, tell me.’

‘Remember, Bullwitt, it will be my feet that will be carrying your noisy head.’

Nicole watched in silent bemusement as William held a conversation with the face that bulged from his stomach. It was like watching a pair of brothers talking – a mixture of banter and argument, yet all with an undercurrent of affection.

Bullwitt’s voice rumbled wistfully. ‘We’d all be best going back to the 1700s. It was quieter then, no hassles; besides, the beer tasted better.’

‘I don’t think it is a question as to which year we travel,’ William said. ‘We should endeavour to leave this place and put as many miles between ourselves and the amphitheatre as possible. Regardless of what time period we occupy, those troublesome rogues always find us and steal our possessions, and it’s as much as we can do to escape with our necks.’

‘What do you suggest? Board a ship and sail away to bleedin’ Tahiti?’

‘No.’

‘Because we’d look a pretty sight, wouldn’t we? Me, you, Billy across there with a neckful of frogs, and the rest of us all marching away along the road to the seaside.’

‘No, clearly we must all discuss what we should do next. Although it goes without saying that to remain here jeopardises the safety of us all.’

At last the penny dropped. Nicole looked up suddenly.

‘You mean you can choose what year you live in? So you can control this thing?’

William looked at her with surprised blue eyes. ‘Why, yes. Not as accurately as some of the Liminals, but if we choose to make landfall in 1766 or 1966, then we do it.’